FDBusiness.com

Alpro, a pioneer in the development and marketing of soya-based food and drinks, has become the first European food company to join the WWF Climate Savers programme. The goal of this prestigious programme is to help industries and businesses to develop new climate and energy solutions.

Bernard Deryckere, chief executive of Alpro, explains: “As the first European food company to join Climate Savers, we hope to inspire other European companies to reduce their ecological footprint. Not only does this partnership illustrate our continuing commitment to sustainable development, it also stimulates us to continue developing our existing climate plans.”

Climate Savers was launched in 2000 and 25 companies have joined this WWF programme to date, including well known brands like Tetra Pak, Sony, HP, Volvo and Coca-Cola.

Between 2008 and 2010, absolute CO2 emissions from Alpro’s plants decreased by 11%, despite a production volume uplift of more than 11%, which resulted in a combined 22% improvement over a two year time period. Alpro’s Climate Savers commitment is to keep its plants’ CO2 emissions by 2013 below 2008 levels, despite an expected one-third growth in volumes. This will be equivalent to emitting 42.000 tons less CO2 than in a business as usual case.

The company is also committed to evaluating concrete ways to further reduce its indirect emissions such as its packaging and transport emissions, including a feasibility study on intermodal transport and a pilot case on horizontal logistics collaboration. And, finally, Alpro will actively promote WWF’s Renewable Energy Vision, for example by becoming a WWF Clean Energy Ambassador, and will leverage the value chain business case, in close collaboration with other Climate Savers companies.

Sustainable development is an integral part of Alpro’s culture. The company has been working on a climate plan to decrease its impact on the environment for some years now. As part of this plan, Alpro has built a new loading dock in the river Lys for its Wevelgem plant in Belgium. Each week at least one ship will be mooring at the landing quay with 20 containers full of soya beans. “From now on, soya beans, the raw ingredients of our products, will be delivered straight to the factory for processing – saving energy, time and CO2 emissions,” says Bernard Deryckere. “This means there will be 1200 less trucks on the road every year.”

Alpro employs some 800 people and has a turnover of approximately Eur260m. Alpro has four production units, located in Belgium, the UK, France and the Netherlands.